Apple’s iOS 11.3 update for iPhones ranks among the most anticipated mid-cycle software releases in its history. But while it brings much-needed closure to the painful batterygate “throttling” debacle, it also comes with a bagful of new problems.

Many aftermarket replacement screens for the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus have stopped responding to touch inputs after the update, effectively bricking the phone.

If you swap your iPhone 8, 8 Plus, or X’s screen—even using original Apple parts, like an identical screen from an identical iPhone—the auto brightness and True Tone features are immediately disabled.

We’ve made good progress developing solutions for these issues, and we’ll share our findings below. But the sheer number of problems—all seemingly targeted at independent iPhone repair—has led to some serious frustration in the repair community, and made a few folks more than a little suspicious. For some, this is a sign that Apple wants to deliberately undermine the work of independent repair shops and DIY fixers by quietly crippling their phones. Others think this is only the beginning, and that Apple will find ever more devious ways to sabotage “unauthorized” repairs.

These are all possibilities, and Apple has certainly earned its reputation for being hostile to independent repair over the years. But in this case, we think the real explanation is simpler and less nefarious: these are bugs.

Remember Error 53? For many months, iPhones with a simple Touch ID problem were being irreversibly bricked by a routine iOS update, with only a vague and un-Apple-like error message as explanation. After a long silence, Apple blamed the problem on “unauthorized” repairs—but soon walked that statement back when it became clear the problem was also affecting some iPhones Apple repaired themselves, and even a few phones that had never been repaired. Apple issued a new statement clarifying that Error 53 was in fact a bug, and released an iOS update that fully resolved the problem.

Error 53, which bricked many a hapless iPhone and offered only this extremely unhelpful error message, proved to be a bug.

Not that we’re sitting on our hands while waiting for Apple.

We’ve identified the issue with battery communication in iOS 11.3, and in the near future we’ll be able to offer batteries that can fully utilize the Battery Health feature. The same goes for the touchscreen problem, which is being corrected on our new displays and can even be retroactively corrected on older displays with a firmware flash (unfortunately there’s no DIY option, so this solution is less than ideal, for now).

The auto-brightness and True Tone problem is more subtle. Both of these features rely on the iPhone’s ambient light sensor, a little module embedded at the top of the display that somehow gets disabled on the latest iPhones anytime the display is changed—even if you keep the original sensor, and even if you use a brand-new, authentic Apple display. And if you put the original display back in, suddenly everything works fine again.

This issue actually predates iOS 11.3, but has only garnered widespread attention in recent days. What’s interesting is that if you hot-swap the display (not recommended, but something we’ve done for testing purposes), the sensor continues to work fine—but it’s immediately disabled on restart, which tells us that some sort of hardware check is failing on startup.

Ambient light sensor in the iPhone X

So why do we think this is a bug, as opposed to a deliberate move by Apple? After all, they’ve purposely disabled certain features before—like fingerprint recognition, which fails if you replace the iPhone’s home button, even when using a genuine Apple part. But even to us, that seems justified given Touch ID’s sensitive security functions. Independent repair techs have long since learned to deal with this by simply reinstalling your original home button after a screen repair, so that your iPhone remains fully functional and completely secure. On the other hand, the ambient light sensor has never had any such security function. Disabling it after a screen repair does nothing to safeguard the customer; it’s just an annoyance.

Alright, let’s say it’s a buggy update and not something malicious. Apple still needs to fix it, if for no other reason than the customer experience. It’s a bad vibe for nearly-new iPhones 8 and X to get crippled for no reason.

And as much as Apple might like to welcome every customer who needs a repair into an Apple Store, that is increasingly impossible in a world with over a billion iOS devices and only 500 Apple Store locations. Since the recent batterygate troubles, they haven’t even been able to keep pace with the number of folks who stand ready and willing to pay them for a new battery, with parts supplies dwindling and wait times in many areas stretching into weeks or months. Of course people have turned to other options—installing new batteries themselves or hiring a local shop to do it for them.

And Apple has more reasons than ever to be accommodating of high-quality repairs performed by skilled customers and 3rd parties. It’s simply the right (and lawful) thing to do.

Apple has struggled to source and install enough replacement batteries to meet demand after customers learned their iPhones’ speed and performance could be hindered by older batteries.

For anyone at Apple reading this, we have a proposal: why not help each other? We’re happy to ship parts to Cupertino for testing when bugs are identified, so that solutions can be implemented quickly for all Apple customers, and not just the ones who are lucky enough to have an Apple Store or authorized service provider nearby when repairs are needed. If bugs are caught early enough, they never have to live beyond the beta. It’s a great opportunity to show that you’re the good guys, and to reassure anyone who might worry you’re sabotaging their efforts to keep their beloved iDevices humming along.

For everyone else: the best thing you can do is to speak up, and let Apple know if these problems are affecting you. Apple doesn’t always respond as quickly as we might like, but when enough people make noise, they do listen.

Update 4/24/2018: Apple today released iOS 11.3.1, which restores touchscreen functionality to aftermarket displays, fixing the problem introduced in iOS 11.3. This was by far the most urgent issue of the three discussed above, so we’re pleased to see it addressed. 2nd Update: The auto brightness bug is also fixed in iOS 12 and later, and works correctly with replacement displays. True Tone remains disabled on replacement displays; it’s unclear if this is a bug or a deliberate move on Apple’s part.

Fascinating detailed article.
Hesitated upgrading to 11.3.1 toady when I saw the warning about possibly impacting functionality of aftermarket screens. Searched for details and found comments about how it only pertains to iPhone 8/8Plus that were bricked by 11.3.0… nobody offered you level of detail on the issues.
Thank you.

Apple should be sued in the courts if they are deliberately updating I.O.S that bricks people’s phones.
What is different about apple why should they try and corner the market when the have not a cat in hells chance of coping with the demand.
A Ford car can be repaired at any reputable repair shop so why not mobile phones come on apple get real.

No matter who repairs it, surely it’s in Apples interests for their device to remain functional. The reason being that the users will still use Apple Music, purchase apps and other media that Apple get a cut of.. If someone can’t afford a new device, but can afford a repair, it’s got to be better that they have the option to keep their devices going anyway they can. It’s a win for both sides.

Everyone must also remember there are many of us in regional areas with no apple repair available at an apple store. My closest is about 1000Km away. We do have local repair shops that are very good at whet they do. Why do people in remote areas have to go to so much trouble when apple decides to stuff up a good phone. There are other phones out there possibly as good as my apple however learning a new system is not the easiest at my age. A friend of mine with an iphone problem recently went to a phone several hundreds of dollars cheaper. After a week or so he is back on line as good as ever and he has a repairable phone, and many dollars more in his pocket. I feel apple will learn eventually.

After each new iPad update, I have more lag and keyboard freezes, it’s got even worse with iOS 11.3.1 . Although I have a memory space of 64Go and available space of 45.67 Go and the fact that I have deleted several apps and reinstalled them and removed several videos, nothing helps, normally I have approximately 10 to 20 emails to reply to, per day. During this I have to reboot my iPad several times to continue writing, it’s rendered my iPad virtually useless. I only hope that someone can help me solve this problem. Best regards Thomas Brunner

It’s time to go to Samsung.
I don’t want to but Apple is dead at the gate.
It will be hard at 61 but doable.
I just bought a $1300 new 8.
But after the torment my 6s gave me and to see the new battery I just got in the mail at $65 from iFixit (which is not that creditable for cancelling an order, trust me just try it) it looks like I will have a raft of issues if I change it it out.
Good luck and let’s start thinking Android I guess.

Help! Problem with Whatsapp after iPhone being restored
My iPhone crashed and needed to be restored. All apps came back OK, but Whatsapp keeps “loanding”and stops before completing the reinstallation. If I turn off the iPhone (fully )and reboot it: idem. If I delete, there is an awarning “you will lose data”, which I need. I contacted Whatsapp by email – they send me orienting me to back up actively on iCloud. I went to iCloud – iCloud drive is on, but Whatspp does not appear in the list of apps. Would anyone know what to do?
Thank you, Ellen

I have an iphone X with a cracked and damaged oled display. It was dropped and there was a black, coin sized spot on the led. Touch function was rendered non-functional and nothing works on screen.
I swapped the screen with a donor iphone X thinking it will work and but it didnt. Having done lots of screen replacements before my first thought was the digitizer on the logic board was damaged. So i installed the damaged screen onto the donor phone and it worked fine , even with the black spot.
maybe IFIXIT can show me how to solve this issue?
Many Thanks in advance

It would be really silly for Apple to try more deceptive tactics… In this day and age, you’re bound to get caught. There’s plenty of business to go around, so as a cell phone repair shop myself, I believe we’ll all be just fine.

Yes just changed the battery in a Iphone 6 because there was no iPhone store anywhere near us and now the touch screen id doesn’t work..The purposely sabotaged this phone-which we own-where a simple repair that they arent even able to do given location..and the bad part-we Bought this iphone with touch id and one touch dialing due to a disabled person with hand coordination issues-with Parkinson’s makes your hands tremor and are hard to use and putting in a code just open the thing constantly is beyond frustrating for them..Thanks Apple. Never again, going another route with this kind of underhanded thievery.

This is typical of Apple, and it really is a problem. When talking with most people in the tech industry, you won’t find many defenders of Apple, and this is just another reason why. As someone in the screen repair industry myself, we see way more users with issues on their apple phones and screens than other brands, even relative to usage numbers. Thanks for sharing and I really hope they listen to ideas like yours moving forward.

I have a device for the photosenstive data transfer. I transfer data between old screen and new screen by this device. its reads the old screen data and writes it to the new screen. And everything works normaly ambient light sensor to.

It’s an apple product you must go to an original Apple store because they know how to fix it. If it is any local store then they can’t fix it properly. Apple devices are very much secured compared to other in the market.

I own an iPhone X. Tragically it got wet. Within half hour I had it to the closest local repair shop that was open on a weekend. No questions asked the pulled my phone apart and replaced the screen. Now I have a vertical line that appears to the right of screen when scrolling. Color fading against other iPhonex And no true depth camera, affecting the phone screen brightness making the phone impossible to use on a sunny day and I’m out of pocket $500aud for repairs. My repair guy failed to mention that now he’s touched it Apple won’t.

This will be the last Apple device for our family. 1 Mac /3 iPads & 3 iphones. We will now be using android.

I am currently fixing an iPhone 8, I replaced the back and front glass. The old screen used to work fine but had a crack. The second one is new of course. However after replacing the orginal screen with the new one just a blue line appeared. So I hooked up the old screen again and it’s screen was messed up also. It shows lines now in the shape of a cross. Anyone have any ideas?

anyway, yesterday I’ve replaced an iPhone 7 Plus screen for my customer and when i went to check the touch id if it’s working or not, there was no TouchID option in the setting XD , that was weird ^^ but the button works and everything, it’s only there is no touchid option in the setting to ad or edit,… so hopefully they are not planning for something complicated for us to just can’t replace aftermarket screens :/

I’ve been repairing cell phones for over 5 years. You could never give me an iPhone. Not even for free! For the life of me I cannot see the craze over these way over priced pieces of crap! Given the opportunity I bought a Lg V20. For the price I would put it up against any iPhone. You all need to wake up and realize how much you’re being scammed by Apple.

EASY, don’t buy apple products. I was just at the store the other for my daughter and the first 5 people in line said they were switching. They will not fix the no service on my daughters phone because they claim there is another issue, but all the emails would not say what until i called them and they said its one of 2 things but they are the ones that repaired her phone last time. so now they want $150 to fix something that they broke or are lieing about and the no service issue should be fixed. Either way, there is nothing i can do unless i pay the $150. Apple knows they have us, because most of us figure we might as well just buy another phone all together. I tried to convince my daughter since she is the lone holdout in my family that doesnt understand the tereible customer service and even worse manufactured products. its clearly evident once youread about the many class actions ect. But Apple is smart, they found bbn out how to get out of fixing what is their original flaw. They waiting a long time to do something about this so that its more likely that you have a “issue” that needs to be fixed at $150 first before the so called “free” fix. They dont dont give anything for free, even when they are in the wrong. Or they just lie about a problem because how can we prove otherwise? I know its not broken but it might be when I get it back. I hope my daughter will change her mind when she has to be on the phone for hours and has to visit the store multiple times for hours. ABSOLUTELY NO PROBLEM EVER WITH SAMSUNG : )